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She was a natural daughter of Robert the Magnificent,[a] Duke of Normandy and born c.1030[1] Elisabeth Van Houts, in her article Les femmes dans l’histoire du duché de Normandie (or Women in the history of ducal Normandy) mentions Countess Adelaide as one of those notable Norman women who were known to have exerted a strong influence on their children especially with regard to passing on their own family history.[2]

In 1082 King William and Queen Matilda gave to the abbey of the Holy Trinity in Caen the town of Le Homme in the Cotentin with a provision to the Countess of Albamarla (Aumale), his sister, for a life tenancy.[8] In 1086, as Comitissa de Albatnarla,[8] as she was listed in the Domesday Book, was shown as having numerous holdings in both Suffolk and Essex,[9] one of the very few Norman noblewomen to have held lands in England at Domesday as a tenant-in-chief.[10] She was also given the lordship of Holderness which was held after her death by her 3rd husband, Odo, the by then disinherited Count of Champagne; the lordship then passed to their son, Stephen.[8] Adelaide died before 1090.[11]

^The question of who her mother was remains unsettled. Elisabeth Van Houts ['Les femmes dans l'histoire du duché de Normandie', Tabularia « Études », n° 2, 2002, (10 July 2002), p. 23, n. 22] makes the argument that Robert of Torigny in the GND II, p. 272 (one of three mentions in this volume of her being William's sister) calls her in this instance William's 'uterine' sister' (soror uterina) and is of the opinion this is a mistake similar to one he made regarding Richard II, Duke of Normandy and his paternal half-brother William, Count of Eu (calling them 'uterine' brothers). Based on this she concludes Adelaide was a daughter of Duke Robert by a different concubine. Kathleen Thompson ["Being the Ducal Sister: The Role of Adelaide of Aumale", Normandy and Its Neighbors, Brepols, (2011) p. 63] cites the same passage in GND as did Elisabeth Van Houts, specifically GND II, 270-2, but gives a different opinion. She noted that Robert de Torigni stated here she was the uterine sister of Duke William "so we might perhaps conclude that she shared both mother and father with the Conqueror." But as Torigni wrote a century after Adelaide's birth and in that same sentence in the GND made a genealogical error, she concludes that the identity of Adelaide's mother remains an open question.

^Prior to it becoming a small county, Aumale was a town on the Bresle river in northeastern Normandy. It came into the family by way of Enguerrand's mother, the heiress of Aumale. It was settled on Adelaide of Normandy as a countship by her brother William the Conqueror, but at what exact time isn't known. Adelaide was the first countess followed by her son Stephen of Aumale as the second holder but first count. See Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, Vol. I, p. 350.